Anime-Source.Com - Puella Magi Madoka Magica

A Spotlight Preview by AJtheFourth

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"Wait, don't tell me you're going to give me that line of crap about 'helping people' and 'justice.'"
-Kyouko Sakura

Madoka Kaname, the heroine of the series.

She dreams of helping others by becoming a magical girl.

The term mahou shoujo or "magical girl" has been used so often to describe a specific collection of characteristics or cliches appearing in certain anime series, that it has become a genre in and of itself. Series like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and more recently, Pretty Cure, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Shugo Chara have helped establish and now exemplify viewers' ideas of the genre. These series feature young girls who are forced, or destined, to don ridiculous outfits and fight with newly-bestowed magical powers against an often mysterious evil force. They fight for idealistic causes, joining forces with friends and once-enemies alike, to learn the values of friendship, love, and teamwork. Throughout these trials, they're never given a choice as to whether they want to be fighting at all.

One moment they're being normal girls...

...and the next, they're caught up in a strange world.

Targeted viewers are meant to wish for the life of the magical girl, playing upon their desires to be important or special. This is why the heroine of a magical girl series is usually ordinary, clumsy, ditzy, or not very intelligent. The lead girl of this series, Madoka Kaname, admits that she's not particularly smart and doesn't excel at anything. She is the epitome of an ordinary schoolgirl who loves her family and playing with her friends. The entire first episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica follows Madoka, appearing to be a standard recipe for a magical girl series than anything particularly different or outstanding.

This is "the cute mascot character," Kyubey.

Who seems a bit more sinister than he looks.

In episode two, Puella Magi Madoka Magica immediately begins subverting these genre ideals by giving Madoka a choice. She is able to choose whether to become a magical girl or not. A magical girl is born when Kyubey, the stereotypical mascot character turned devious, chooses young girls and forms a contract with them. They are then given powers to fight off evil entities known as witches in exchange for having a wish of their own granted. Magical girl series are always about wish fulfillment since they, as mentioned previously, play off the audience's own desires to be special. Rarely do they focus as much on the severe price that may have to be paid. Madoka twists this and reveals what its own characters consider to be wishes that they would be willing to die for, while repeatedly showing the characters, and the audience, how dangerous fighting witches can be.

The "good sempai," Mami Tomoe.

She has a really large gun.

Madoka's cast of heroines is a bit more varied than most of the series it references. Mami Tomoe fights for the greater good reflecting the stereotypical ideal while Kyouko Sakura, fights for herself. The witches that they are forced to fight drop capsules of energy called "grief seeds," which are necessary to sustain and grow the girls' powers. This also pits the girls against one another and makes it so that only the strongest or most daring magical girls survive. At one point Kyouko bluntly states, "Haven't you heard of something called the food chain? You should have learned about it in school." This flies in the face of the values of love, friendship, and teamwork that most magical girl series strive to uphold. While this allows for many twists on traditional cliches, it does make some of the characters a bit static. Homura is the morally ambiguous magical girl, who never goes out of her way to meet people unless it's for a specific reason. Mami fights for the "right" reasons, but is shown as being utterly isolated from her family and friends. Fortunately in more recent episodes, the main characters are beginning to be fleshed out more, especially Madoka's best friend, Sayaka.

A powerful witch.

Witches drop grief seeds, valuable to the magical girls.

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